Trade talks between the United States and Canada collapsed Friday. With President Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs taking effect the following day, Prime Minister Mark Carney quickly responded with retaliatory measures that go into effect in September.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection sent out guidance for importers saying that the tariffs, which Trump first announced last month, would go into effect Saturday. They impact about $20 billion of Canadian goods, including hockey sticks, building materials, clothing, beer, and cheese. 

Negotiators from both countries had worked for weeks to reach a trade deal, leading up to a three-day extension of the original tariff deadline. At the time, Trump suggested that an agreement had been reached, writing on Truth Social on Tuesday that he had “paused” the tariffs because the two countries “have a DEAL!”

But in a statement just before midnight on Friday, Carney said that “progress has not been enough to meet our objectives for Canadians.”

Read more: Trump Imposes 50% Tariff Hike on Canadian Goods

“As a result, this evening, I have decided to suspend trade negotiations with the U.S. and have directed Canada’s negotiators to return to Ottawa,” the Prime Minister said. He accused the Trump Administration of introducing last-minute changes to the deal that he said were “unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.” 

Following the collapse of the negotiations, Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday and said that Canada “wants the benefits of being a State, without being one” and that it has “also charged our great farmers, for many years, massive amounts of Tariffs. No more!!!”

It’s unclear what Trump meant in his latest tirade, though the U.S. President has previously floated the idea of making Canada the U.S.’s 51st state.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on social media on Saturday that Canada had “declined to finalize the trade deal under the terms agreed earlier this week.”

“New demands and walk backs of other commitments by Canada have upended the careful balance reached in the past days,” Greer said. “This is a missed opportunity for Canada to partner with the United States.”

Carney vowed that the tariffs would not go unanswered. Speaking at a news conference Saturday, he announced dollar-for-dollar tariffs on U.S. goods.

“We ⁠cannot ​accept what they have offered, and ​we will not give what they have asked,” he said.

The retaliatory tariffs will touch U.S. sectors including steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics, and they will go into effect Sept. 8.

The growing rift between the U.S. and Canada

Polling conducted before the talks collapsed suggests that most Canadians supported taking a hard line in negotiations with the U.S.

An Angus Reid Institute poll from July found that 65% of Canadians say that their government should approach the U.S. either cautiously, as a potential threat, or as an enemy.

Reflecting similar sentiments, a Léger poll from this month showed that 56% of Canadian respondents want the federal government to make no further concessions to Washington in ongoing trade and tariff negotiations—compared to 31% who favor flexibility.

While the new import taxes will only apply to about 5% of what Canada ships to the U.S. each year, the breakdown in negotiations further fractures an already strained relationship between the two countries and their leaders.
Trump and Carney have taken swipes at each other since the U.S. President returned to office last January. 

After an article claimed that the country was in a “technical recession” this summer, Trump revived his call to make Canada the 51st state in the U.S.

Carney then mocked Trump at a housing policy event in Toronto on Aug. 5 when his teleprompter stopped working.

“Unlike a certain world leader, I do not view this as a conspiracy,” Carney told reporters, referencing Trump's claims of “sabotage” after a teleprompter malfunctioned during his address at the United Nations General Assembly last September.

Later that day, Trump called Canada’s leadership “nasty” during an event at Red Rock Casino Resort in Las Vegas as trade negotiations were ongoing.

"Yes, it's a tough negotiation,” Carney said in response. “You can change the adjective and say 'nasty,' but for ​Canada it's ​a question ⁠of Canadian jobs, it's a question of the future of Canadian enterprises.”

With negotiations suspended and matching tariffs on the way, the rift has moved beyond rhetoric into a widening trade war.

President Donald Trump announced on Friday that he has coordinated a new deal to lower beef prices in the U.S.

“Today, I concluded a deal to substantially lower the price of ground beef for working American families,” he said in a Truth Social post. “For the next 90 days, the United States will allow up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef to be imported with no out of quota tariff. We have a commitment that this beef will be sold at 25 percent below current market prices.”

“This deal will reduce prices for Americans while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again,” he continued.

An “out of quota tariff” is a higher tariff that is triggered if the amount of a product imported into the U.S. exceeds a certain quantity.

Read More: Why Ground Beef Prices Are Hitting Record-Highs in the U.S.

It’s unclear who the deal is with or which countries will be importing the beef into the U.S. A White House official told TIME that Trump secured an agreement with foreign beef exporters to sell beef at a 25% discount, which will be passed on to American consumers, in exchange for Trump lifting the out of quota tariff on lean beef trimmings that will be used for ground beef production. The White House official added that the President plans to sign an Executive Order regarding the deal within the next couple of weeks.

Both Trump and the White House official cited the soaring price of beef as the motivation behind the new deal. Last month, the average price of ground beef for American consumers was about $6.885 per pound—a jump of roughly 57% from just five years earlier, according to data shared by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The price of uncooked ground beef went up by 9% in July, compared to the same time last year, according to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics last month.

Beef prices have skyrocketed in large part because of supply shortages: American cattle herd sizes are at a low not seen in years, even as consumer demand for beef remains high in the country.

The American Farm Bureau Federation reported last month that, while the total cattle inventory went up a bit at the start of July for the first in eight years, the beef cow herd dropped to 28.5 million head, decreasing by about 1% compared to the same time last year, making it the “smallest July inventory on record,” with data dating back to 1973. Experts attribute the pressure on herds largely to droughts driven by climate change.

The deal that Trump announced on Friday isn’t the first time his Administration has made efforts to try and address the soaring price of beef for consumers. The President also signed an Executive Order earlier this year aimed at increasing the amount of lean beef trimmings imported from Argentina by 80,000 metric tons per year.

Experts, however, cast doubt on whether boosting beef imports from Argentina will be effective at lowering the cost on Americans, saying that the boost in imports would make up too small a portion of the overall supply in the U.S. to have a significant impact. And the cattle industry has objected to such efforts in the past, expressing concerns that those moves would undermine producers within the U.S.

Colin Woodall—the CEO of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a trade association for cattle farmers and ranchers—said in a statement on Friday that he was “disappointed” by Trump’s announcement.

“While America’s cattle producers share the goal of keeping groceries affordable for consumers, flooding the market with government-subsidized, below-market beef is not the way to rebuild the American cattle herd,” Woodall said. “We are already working to rebuild after years of ongoing drought, high input costs and other challenges that have reduced U.S. cattle numbers. Today’s announcement and other market interventions throw cold water on the prospect of herd expansion and sacrifices long-term stability for short term messaging.”

President Donald Trump on Thursday buried the hatchet with his former attorney Michael Cohen, appearing on Cohen’s radio show in what was the first public exchange between the two men in eight years.

Trump and Cohen have a tumultuous history. Cohen worked as Trump’s personal lawyer dating back to the mid-2000s. But he severed ties with Trump around 2018, when he pleaded guilty to federal crimes, including campaign finance violations, and said he had made payments to two women at Trump’s direction in an effort to keep them from speaking publicly about alleged affairs with the then-presidential candidate. He went on to serve a three-year sentence following his guilty plea. Cohen later made a number of explosive claims about Trump in testimony in front of Congress, and served as a key witness in the criminal hush money trial that resulted in Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts. 

Read More: Trump and Hush-Money Trial’s Central Witness Share a Tortured History

“You and I have obviously traveled a pretty rocky road together,” Cohen said to Trump on his radio show 77 WABC-AM in New York on Thursday. The program will air in its entirety on Sunday. 

Trump did not dwell too much on the past during the portion of the show that aired on Thursday, but voiced sympathy and appreciation for Cohen.

"They weaponized you like nobody's ever been weaponized, like few have been," Trump told his former lawyer. “They weaponized a lot of people, and I respect the fact that you recanted everything you said. And that’s a big — that’s a big thing that you did. That’s a very big thing.”

The men’s conversation also criss-crossed through a range of other topics related to Iran, the economy, and Democrats. 

Cohen appeared on CNN ahead of the airing of the program and commented on his relationship, and conversation, with Trump. 

“How is it possible after all of what took place? All of the name calling, the years of the public war, the verbal missiles that we threw at one another. How is it possible that the two of us can ever sit down again?” Cohen told CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “The answer is that we forgave.”

When asked to define the current state of his relationship with the President, Cohen remarked, “it’s being resuscitated.” 

Cohen was also pressed on whether he has asked Trump for a pardon. 

“I have not,” Cohen first responded. But he went on to clarify that he did submit a pardon application to President Joe Biden, which he later altered after Trump took back office. 

“What I did is I took that same application with the same documentation, and I just rewrote the cover letter, removing the name of President Joe Biden and inserting the name President Donald Trump,” Cohen said. 

Cohen also took to his Substack on Thursday to speak about making amends with Trump, which he said made people “furious.” Referencing the Bible, Cohen asserted that Colossians 3:13—a passage that reads, ”Forgive as the Lord forgave you”—was the “foundation” of what transpired between him and Trump.

“We forgave,” Cohen wrote. “Forgiveness doesn’t require amnesia. It requires the courage to stop allowing yesterday to dictate tomorrow.”

Cohen’s remarks ring in stark contrast to previous words he has offered about the President.

In 2019, after pleading guilty, Cohen was called by the House Oversight and Reform Committee to further detail his role as Trump’s attorney and said Trump “is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.” When asked how many times Trump had asked him to threaten an individual or entity on his behalf, Cohen responded that Trump had done so on over 500 occasions throughout their professional relationship. 

The following year, Cohen published Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump, a 432-page tell-all about the years he spent as Trump’s lawyer and fixer. 

“I knew Trump better than anyone else did,” Cohen wrote at one point in the book. “I knew him better than even his family did, because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: A cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.”

And in 2024, Cohen was the prosecution’s main witness in Trump’s criminal trial over charges of falsifying business records related to hush money payments made to Daniels when Trump was running for President for the first time in 2016. 

“What I was doing, I was doing at the direction of and benefit of Mr. Trump,” Cohen said on the stand in 2024.

Phones rise across the room as Chris Rabb steps to the front. It is the second day of the national summit for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in Chicago, and Rabb is fresh off an upset that launched the movement’s summer winning streak, defeating party-backed rivals in a Democratic congressional primary outside Philadelphia.

Activists in red shirts move closer to take selfies. Some wear DSA’s rose insignia; others have slogans about ICE or Gaza stretched across their chests. “All right, comrades,” Rabb says, using the group’s preferred form of address with a satisfied grin. He asks whether anyone is actually from his district. A few hands go up. For everyone else, Rabb explains, he intends to be their “bonus rep”: another vote and voice for the causes they have spent years trying to push from the margins of Democratic politics to the center of the national debate.

Then Rabb, who at 56 is among the oldest people at the summit, tells the room what he thinks is happening. “As someone who’s been around the block a few times, I’ve never, ever felt this level of electricity,” Rabb says. “Do not take this for granted. Do not let people try to gaslight you and tell you you do not have power.” The room erupts.

There is plenty feeding the confidence. By the time DSA members gather in Chicago in early August, Republicans are gleefully calling it the “Summer of Socialism.” The organization’s membership has surged past 120,000. Its candidates and allies have toppled establishment-backed Democrats in Congressional primaries from New York to Colorado to Florida. Zohran Mamdani, a longtime DSA member, is running New York City. Socialists have captured or are poised to win mayoralties in Seattle and Washington, D.C., while Nithya Raman is headed for a November runoff in Los Angeles. DSA could enter the next Congress with its largest contingent ever. Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary with the backing of prominent socialists and a platform that mostly mirrors DSA’s, though he told TIME he doesn’t claim the movement’s mantle. DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a way-too-early favorite in the notional 2028 Democratic presidential primary, according to prediction markets. “This feels like seeds that were planted years ago are now bearing fruit,” Ashik Siddique, DSA’s 38-year-old national co-chair, tells me from a sofa tucked beside the meeting rooms where about 600 democratic socialists gathered for the weekend.

For a movement that counted only a few thousand members a decade ago, the transformation is remarkable. Bernie Sanders made democratic socialism legible to millions of Americans; AOC gave it a younger national face; Mamdani demonstrated that a socialist could defeat the Democratic establishment, govern a major city, and then help elect more socialists behind him. But with the midterms looming, the question is now how far the model travels.

Less than two weeks after the summit, the swing state of Wisconsin supplied an answer DSA members did not want: Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist state legislator, narrowly lost the Democratic primary for governor to Milwaukee County executive David Crowley, who had briefly dropped out of the race just weeks before Election Day. The primary’s finish was dominated by scrutiny of Hong’s since-renounced positions on everything from abolishing the police to canceling Thanksgiving. To establishment Democrats, the outcome suggests DSA’s popularity remains limited to areas where Democrats already dominate. “We aren’t seeing DSA win in places that are core to winning the majority,” former Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison tells me after Hong’s loss. “Their platform is not the top agenda for the folks who live in those communities.” A week later, an upset in a red state challenged that thinking, as DSA member Angie Nixon defeated establishment favorite Alex Vindman for the Democratic Senate primary in Florida, despite being outraised more than 16 to 1. Republicans, meanwhile, are eager to  paint the entire party with a far-left brush in hopes of stemming the blue wave both sides see forming on the horizon this November.

Yet DSA is ascendant inside a Democratic Party that needs what the movement is producing: volunteers, enthusiasm, disciplined organizing, and a message that connects with the economic anxieties of young voters. A third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters now identify as democratic socialists, according to a CNN poll released July 30.

But DSA carries liabilities of its own. Its national platform goes far beyond what successful candidates typically advertise: the group favors abolishing the Senate, eliminating police and prisons, dismantling ICE, closing overseas military bases, and bringing large corporations under public ownership. Republicans are eager to attach those positions to every Democrat in the country. Some Democrats are just as eager to keep their distance. “There are candidates who have won primaries and call themselves communists,” says Matt Bennett of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, which is preparing a $15 million effort to discredit democratic socialism ahead of 2028. “It’s much harder to push back when there’s a grain of truth to the charge.”

The stakes are about to become more concrete. Along with almost certainly increasing their numbers in Congress, DSA is set to take the reins of the U.S. capital. Critics in both parties will be searching for proof that the winners of these insurgent campaigns are too radical, too idealistic, or simply inept. But to DSA leaders, it’s an unprecedented opportunity to show Democrats, and the country, that its agenda for everything from housing costs and labor protections to immigration and foreign policy is what voters are looking for heading into 2028. “We’re bringing a meaningfully different style and substance to politics,” Siddique says. “We’re proving it works, and it’s raising everyone’s expectations. People look to New York and D.C. or Los Angeles or Minneapolis, and they are increasingly feeling like, wow, we could do what they did here.”

At the opening session in Chicago, Kaitlin Marone asks who in the room was already a member in 2016. A few hands rise. The DSA field organizer moves the date forward to 2020. Nearly half the room raises theirs. Then Marone asks everyone to turn to their comrades and explain why they joined.

The conversations offer clues to DSA’s sudden relevance. Members talk about rent and health care, Donald Trump and immigration enforcement, Israel and Gaza, jobs that do not pay enough and homes they cannot afford. Others describe a Democratic Party they no longer believe is capable of addressing the problems shaping their lives.

There is plenty at the summit to remind visitors that this is an avowedly socialist organization. A bookseller in the hallway sells Marxist literature; The Communist Manifesto sells out by evening. Nearby, organizers decorate a “Free Stuff!” booth with fake bags of money and gold bars. But many of the grievances drawing people toward DSA no longer sound especially fringe. For Katie Sims, DSA’s 28-year-old electoral chair, the revelation came after graduating from Cornell in 2020 and looking at what a job would pay, then what rent and health insurance would cost. “I was like, none of these numbers add up,” Sims says. Polls show younger Americans are increasingly pessimistic about reaching the basic milestones available to their parents: homeownership, financial security, raising a family without amassing crushing debt. But, while Mamdani was elected mayor of New York with 51% of the vote, the people DSA has attracted are disproportionately young, white, urban, and college educated—hardly a representative sample of the working class the organization hopes to organize.

Many DSA members first arrive angry about a landlord, a hospital bill, student debt, or a war overseas. By connecting all of those problems to one larger one—the rapid concentration of wealth and power—DSA has given those frustrations a home and a vocabulary, and, increasingly, a way to organize around them. The movement has been adept at identifying places where Democratic voters are moving before the party establishment does, and then organizing the people who are already there.

Israel has provided another opening. Democratic voters, particularly younger ones, have moved sharply against Israel’s conduct in Gaza, while many elected Democrats have been slower to follow. DSA, which long called for ending U.S. military aid to Israel, was poised for the shift in public opinion. Sara Almosawi, a 24-year-old daughter of working-class parents from Iraq and Indonesia, joined DSA after Sanders ended his 2020 presidential campaign. “My parents immigrated here to follow the American Dream, and I don’t think that really panned out,” she says. In college, she helped lead campus protests against the war in Gaza and is now national co-chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America.

That pipeline is beginning to reach elected office. Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, organized at Columbia before winning a congressional primary this summer with opposition to U.S. support for Israel at the center of her campaign. Other DSA-backed candidates have campaigned on more affordable housing, stronger unions, Medicare for All, and tighter restrictions on data centers—issues where the organization argues Democrats are too cautious or constrained by donors.

Mamdani has emerged as the movement’s most effective translator. His campaign took ideas long associated with DSA, including free public buses, city-run grocery stores, and freezing rent, and framed them around an argument almost anyone could understand: life in New York had become too expensive, and government should make it cheaper. By pairing that affordability message with outspoken opposition to U.S. support for Israel, he turned two forces drawing younger voters toward the socialist left into a coherent political identity. “The mood changed right after Mamdani won,” Sims says. “The answer to ‘could we build it’ is yes.” 

On the first night of the summit, about 50 socialists pack into a dimly lit bar on Chicago’s South Side to discuss the next presidential election. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not there, but her name and face appear on signs and pins scattered around the unofficial “DSA for AOC” gathering, where members squeeze into booths and spill onto the patio. After spending the day talking about labor organizing and how to build a lasting movement, the conversation turns to what might be possible in 2028. “We’re in the moment of the presidential question,” Sims tells the crowd, standing on a chair as comrades cheer.  “Doesn’t it just make sense now?”

Ocasio-Cortez has not ruled out running for President, and DSA leaders I speak with regard an endorsement from the group as close to inevitable if she does. They say no other working politician has her mix of a national following, massive fundraising network, and talent for pressing socialist ideals. A few other names are floated, including progressive Representative Ro Khanna of California and United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain. (Neither is a socialist.) Jeremy Cohan, a longtime New York DSA organizer, argues that AOC alone could merge Obama-style organizing with Sanders-style politics. “It has never really been tried,” he says. “And I think that could change the country.”

But Ocasio-Cortez also demonstrates the challenges ahead if the movement aims to mature. The national organization declined to renew its endorsement of her in 2024 after disagreements over her vote defending Israel's right to exist and past support for strengthening the Iron Dome, even as its New York chapter continued supporting her. Some members worry that a presidential campaign would pull her toward the Democratic mainstream; others wonder whether demanding ideological fidelity would squander the influence they spent a decade building. 

Even as they debate rallying behind her, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledges that many DSA ideas remain broadly toxic. Asked after Hong’s loss about her past calls to defund the police and other provocative statements from 2020, Ocasio-Cortez (who made some herself) wryly quoted fellow DSA member and New York City councilman Chi Ossé: “Woke 1 was crazy.”

The dispute reflects a larger question: What exactly does DSA want to do with the power it is accumulating? Even DSA’s leaders disagree over how far to go. At a June meeting in St. Louis, its National Political Committee debated for hours whether to add support for abolishing the Senate to the platform. Advocates argue the upper chamber is a fundamentally undemocratic institution because each state, regardless of population, gets two Senators. “This is not the time to put that demand forward,” someone argued. The proposal passed by one vote. Cliff Connolly, a 31-year-old member of DSA’s Marxist Unity Group who pushed for its inclusion, envisions a system in which the House chooses the executive, eliminating a presidency he believes has accumulated monarchical power. “The person will no longer be the king of America, like Donald Trump is today,” Connolly tells me at the summit, wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.

The distance between that vision and the campaigns DSA is winning captures the central contradiction of its success. DSA-endorsed candidates have triumphed by running on some of the group’s issues while eschewing others. But if candidates aren’t aligning with core components of DSA’s platform, former DNC chair Harrison asks, “how does that reflect on the DSA, then?”

Some members fear focusing too much on electoral success risks reducing DSA to another faction within the Democratic Party. “Electoral politics will not save us,” Rabb says in Chicago. “It’s only a component of collective liberation. You’re never going to hear me saying voting is all that matters.” Some have called for the DSA to become its own party rather than running on the Democratic ballot. But DSA leaders say the recent streak of wins has strengthened the pragmatists. “Our members want to keep doing what’s working,” Siddique says, “which is just running as Democrats.”

If its nominees win in November, DSA’s tiny congressional presence could become something resembling a bloc. It would still amount to a handful of seats in a 435-member House. But in a chamber governed by narrow margins, a handful can matter. Hakeem Jeffries, who is positioned to become Speaker if the Democrats control the House, could find himself in repeated negotiations with the DSA caucus over close votes on everything from funding for Israel to avoiding a government shutdown.

And then there is 2028. An Ocasio-Cortez campaign could force the organization to face the compromises required to elect a President. Members imagine Ocasio-Cortez building on Mamdani’s momentum and Sanders’ strong showing in two presidential primaries, giving the movement a national vehicle for turning its ideas into power without compromising its overarching goal: a socialist United States. “We need a fighting unified left,” Diana Kingsbury, a 31-year-old community organizer from Santa Rosa, Calif., tells me as light rain begins to fall on the patio of the Chicago bar. “We need to have muscles behind our issues. Otherwise, what are we doing?”

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he was tapping Dr. Heidi Overton to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the health agency responsible for overseeing the safety and effectiveness of products including food, drugs, and medical devices.

“Dr. Heidi has been a ROCKSTAR in my Administration, where she has worked directly with Secretary Kennedy, Dr. Oz, and team, to deliver on the MOST TRANSFORMATIVE Health Agenda in History,” the President said in a Truth Social post. “We need her leadership at the FDA now to ensure that the U.S. remains the WORLD LEADER for Scientific Discovery and CURES.”

He went on to say that, in the role, Overton would work with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz “to RAPIDLY deliver on my priorities of FASTER Cures, INCREASED American Innovation, MAJOR Clinical Trial Reforms, LOWER Drug Prices, and even more MAHA WINS!”

If confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, Overton would take over the role previously held by Dr. Marty Makary, who stepped down from the position in May amid growing pushback from both outside of and within the White House.

Here’s what to know about Overton.

She’s a physician—and used to work at a conservative think tank

Overton, who has both an MD and PhD, used to be the chief policy officer at a conservative think tank called the America First Policy Institute. She is also a board-certified physician in public health and general preventive medicine, according to her bio on the institute’s website.

She currently works for the White House in another role

Overton already works in Trump’s White House, and has recently been in attendance at several events where the President has promoted his Administration’s health policies. She currently serves on the White House Domestic Policy Council, which “supervises the development, coordination, and execution of domestic policy in the White House” and “offers advice to the President and represents his priorities to Congress,” according to the White House website.

Last week, she was in the Oval Office with the President when he signed an Executive Order calling for children across the country to receive fewer immunizations—a move that was widely denounced by medical organizations and doctors. During the Oval Office signing, Trump said that concern over rising autism rates was one of the motivations behind the Executive Order. Research overwhelmingly demonstrates that vaccines are both safe and effective, and years of studies have found no link between vaccines and autism.

Read More: What Trump’s Executive Order Could Mean for Childhood Vaccines

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana—a physician who has provoked the President’s ire in part by publicly criticizing some of the Administration’s health policy changes, including Kennedy’s skepticism of vaccines—took to social media on Wednesday to share his concerns about Overton.

“While I respect Dr. Overton’s experience as a physician, I have strong concerns about her nomination to be FDA Commissioner,” he said on X. “Her lack of managerial experience does not prepare her well for leading a large organization that is already dealing with staffing and morale issues. Additionally, Dr. Overton’s active role in last week’s nonsensical vaccine executive order calls into question her commitment to standing up for sound science and protecting children’s health. That alone is almost disqualifying.”

She is a vocal opponent of abortion

Overton has publicly expressed anti-abortion views. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, Overton celebrated the ruling, calling it a “huge victory for life.” She has written several articles for the America First Policy Institute opposing abortion, including one in 2023 that lamented the Biden Administration’s efforts to expand access to abortion pills, which she claimed “are far more dangerous to women.” Years of research have shown that abortion pills are both safe and effective.

Read More: How the Biden Administration Protected Abortion Pill Access—and What Trump Could Do Next

After Trump was elected to a second term, many abortion providers and advocates voiced fears that he would appoint someone to lead the FDA who would restrict or revoke access to abortion pills. Several reproductive rights organizations condemned Trump’s nomination of Overton to lead the FDA on Wednesday.

“Donald Trump is trying to put an anti-abortion extremist in charge of any agency that could seriously undermine reproductive healthcare—including the agency that could roll back access to mifepristone nationwide,” Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmaraju said in a statement. She went on to accuse Overton of having “spread junk science about medication abortion.”

“Her nomination is another alarming step in Trump’s plan to weaponize every part of the federal government to restrict abortion nationwide,” Timmaraju continued.

Anti-abortion organizations, meanwhile, threw their support behind Overton.

“We believe Dr. Overton has an opportunity to help strengthen restrictions on the chemical abortion regimen,” Sarah Zagorski, senior director of public relations and communications for the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life, said in a statement.

Kennedy has praised her

In a post on X on Wednesday, Kennedy said that he was “confident” that he and Trump “chose the best person for the job” at the FDA. He said that he has witnessed Overton “challenge assumptions, demand excellence, and turn bold ideas into meaningful results.”

“At the @FDA, she will make our food supply safer, modernize drug approvals, unleash American medical innovation, accelerate access to lifesaving treatments, bring greater transparency and accountability to the agency, and restore Gold Standard Science as the foundation of every decision,” Kennedy said.

A previously little-known White House aide has garnered growing public attention in recent days after Sen. Jon Ossoff mentioned her while levying an attack on President Donald Trump.

The Georgia Democrat said that Trump “doesn’t want to do the job” of President. Instead, Ossoff continued, “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie.”

Ossoff was referring to 35-year-old Natalie Harp, a longtime aide to Trump. When asked about Ossoff’s comments, Trump likened the Democrat to “Pee-wee Herman” and said he “would much rather do other things.”

Read More: CNN Condemns the White House’s Attacks on Journalist Kristen Holmes: Here’s What to Know

Ossoff has stood by his remark about Trump and Harp. Appearing on MS NOW this week, the Georgia Senator said: “It’s been amazing to watch this White House melt down over this all week.”

So who is Harp, and what is her role in the White House? Here’s what to know.

Harp said that Trump saved her life

In 2019, Harp went on Fox News and thanked Trump for signing the Right to Try law the year before. She told the network that she had stage 2 bone cancer, and that the new law allowed her to access experimental treatments, which she said saved her life.

After hearing her recount her experience, Trump asked her to give a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, according to the New York Times.

“When I failed the chemotherapies that were on the market, no one wanted me in their clinical trials,” she said at the event. “They didn’t give me the right to try experimental treatments, Mr. President. You did, and without you, I’d have died waiting for them to be approved.”

But after the convention, the Washington Post reported that medical experts cast doubt on Harp’s claims. Harp has said that she was treated with “an FDA-approved immunotherapy drug for an unapproved use,” and experts said that the federal legislation that Trump signed in 2018 wouldn’t have made that drug accessible to Harp because the medication had already been approved.

About two years after her speech at the Republican National Convention, she became a member of Trump’s staff.

She used to work for a far-right news channel

Before Harp joined Trump’s team, she worked as an anchor for a far-right news channel called One America News Network for a couple years. While working for the network, she propagated Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.

Her official title is ‘special assistant to the President and executive assistant to the President’

In Harp’s role, officially called the “special assistant to the President and executive assistant to the President,” she works closely with Trump. Many of the Truth Social posts that the President shares are ones that he dictated to her to type and hit “post” on. 

According to the Times, which cited two people who were aware of the situation, Harp hit the “send” button on the enraged messages that Trump sent to the billionaire and major Republican donor Miriam Adelson in 2024—messages that nearly lost him Adelson’s backing. 

Harp was also the one who transcribed dozens of social media posts that Trump dictated to her one day in which he attacked the writer E. Jean Carroll, who alleged that Trump raped her in the 1990s, the Times reported.

Some of Harp’s colleagues have dubbed her the “human printer” because she is known for carrying a portable printer as she trails Trump around so she can give him whatever information he wants or needs in print copies.

When appearing on MS NOW this week, Ossoff accused Harp of “printing out Donald Trump’s daily dose of delusion and flattery.”

She was one of the select number of people who was on Trump’s secret flight out of Turkey

When Trump left Turkey in July on a secret, alternate plane after receiving an Iranian assassination threat, only a few people working in the White House were on his flight, including Harp, CBS News reported. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was also on the plane with Trump and Harp, as were a couple other aides. Other higher-up members of his Administration, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, were on the other plane—the one that the Administration had said that Trump would travel on, and that members of the White House press corps were on.

Read More: Why Trump’s Secret Flight Was Extraordinary by Presidential Standards

When asked by the Times about Harp’s role in the White House and why she was selected to be among the few staffers on the secret flight, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest-working aides on President Trump’s team.”

The nature of her relationship with Trump has been a subject of scrutiny

According to the Times, Harp wrote Trump several letters in 2023 that concerned some people near him. In the letters, which reporters at the Times viewed, Harp wrote messages including: “You are all that matters to me” and “I don’t ever want to let you down.” She called Trump her “Guardian and Protector in this Life,” and thanked him, the outlet reported.

“I want to bring you joy,” she wrote in one of the letters, according to the Times, “to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk ‘work.’”

The news outlet also reported, citing two sources with knowledge of the remark, that Trump said at one point in 2023 that Harp was the only person on his team who cared about him.

Harp’s estranged brother, Preston Harp, was asked about the Times’ reporting about the 2023 letters when he appeared on CNN this week. He replied: “I’d say since she was like 16, she’s had an obsession with, gosh, how do I explain this? She’s written letters to other Presidents. Let me put it that way. And so like, her dream came true finally.” When asked which Presidents she wrote letters to, he said: “I didn’t see the letter, but George Bush obviously, during the Iraq war.”

He also described his sister’s relationship with Trump as an “infatuation” but said, “I don’t think it’s a physical attraction.”

“I think that Trump’s best friends are people who are his fan club,” he said. “And so she’s his biggest fan. And so that’s probably why he likes her. And she’s good looking. She’s got a good personality. I don’t know.”

“I mean she thinks that he saved her life, so, like, somebody living with that kind of gratitude—that must feel pretty good,” he continued.

Harp has not publicly spoken about her relationship with Trump in the wake of Ossoff’s comments, but other White House aides and Republicans have jumped to her defense.

In a statement to TIME, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle called Ossoff’s comments “cringeworthy” and criticized the Senator’s voting record, in addition to defending Harp.

“Natalie Harp is one of the most loyal and hardest working aides on President Trump’s team,” Ingle said in the statement.

Eric Trump, one of the President’s sons, slammed CNN’s interview with Preston Harp on Wednesday.

“What absolute trash,” he said in a post on X. “Natalie is an incredible young woman — a cancer survivor, a genuinely good person, and arguably one of the hardest-working people in the White House. She’s deeply committed to my father, to her job, and to this country.”

President Donald Trump’s Administrations have overseen construction work on hundreds of miles of barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. But one small portion of the planned wall—stretching merely 17 miles—has become the center of a hard-fought battle.

That section of the project, which extends across challenging terrain in Texas’ Big Bend National Park that has historically seen relatively few attempted border crossings, has faced pushback from everyone from public lands advocates to congressional lawmakers to local residents.

Read More: What's the Status of Trump's Border Wall? A Key Campaign Promise, Over a Decade On

The Trump Administration has been pushing the construction of the border wall in Big Bend despite the public outcry, going so far as to bypass a score of environmental laws to expedite the project. 

But on Monday, after months of opposition, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) Commissioner Rodney Scott announced that CBP had paused “all construction” in the park while he visited the site to conduct a “personal, on-the-ground evaluation.” In post on X, Scott wrote that he would be working to “evaluate the terrain and listen to local leadership, community members and stakeholders” over the next “couple of days.” 

Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott also said on Monday that he had spoken with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who Abbott said had “committed” to not building “a wall or a fence” in Big Bend. Abbott said there were “other tools” to ensure border security. 

Here’s what to know about the Trump Administration’s efforts to build the border wall in Big Bend, and the opposition the project is confronting. 

What the Trump Administration is seeking to build in Big Bend

Big Bend National Park sits in a remote southwest corner of Texas along the U.S.-Mexico border in Brewster County. The Administration has sought to build 17 miles of barriers across that section of the border as part of the larger border wall project.

Perhaps the most recognizable image of Trump’s wall is the “primary wall,” a structure built from tall steel bollards up to 30 feet tall that makes up the first line of the barrier system that would be encountered by those travelling north from Mexico. The section of the project planned to run through Big Bend, however, would look notably different, according to Scott.

“CBP is building one new access road, improving existing roads, installing detection technology, and placing vehicle barriers in limited, strategic locations,” he said. “We are NOT building a 30-foot wall or stadium lighting through Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, or the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area.”

The portion of the wall in the park would be made up of a non-contiguous “vehicle barrier system,” according to the CBP, which consists of “steel posts supported by continuous steel rails,” power cables, cameras, roads for patrol cars, and shelters along the border. 

According to the agency’s Smart Wall tracker, an interactive and frequently updated map that shows the status of the border wall, CBP has several construction projects interspersed along the border labeled as a “vehicle barriers … technology & patrol road.” A couple of these are located at the southern tip of the park; one sits far west near Presidio County, while others are located at the eastern edge of the park. These sites are in the Chihuahuan Desert, which presents a difficult landscape to navigate filled with steep canyons and mountainous terrain.   

A controversial push to speed construction

In June, the Trump Administration waived more than 20 environmental and preservation laws intended to protect Big Bend’s landscape in order to accelerate the construction of the border wall in the park.

To do so, the Administration invoked a section of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, which allows the government to bypass laws that obstruct the building of border wall.

DHS defended the move at the time by describing Big Bend as an “area of high illegal entry” and saying that “there is presently an acute and immediate need” to build more barriers.

Migrant encounters are relatively rare at the section of the border that runs through the park, however—and have become more so in recent years. The park includes roughly 118 miles of what’s known as the Big Bend Sector of the border, which spans 517 miles from Sierra Blanca, Texas, to Sanderson, Texas, and covers roughly one-quarter of the full length of the U.S.-Mexico boundary. CBP recorded a 74% decrease in border crossings through its Big Bend Sector between fiscal years 2023 and 2025, with apprehensions dropping from 11,823 to 3,096. There were a total of 237,538 migrant encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border in FY 2025, meaning that the 3,096 apprehensions in that sector accounted for just 1.3% of the total number. And CBP’s planned border wall in the park would only cover a fraction of a fraction of the full sector.

The Administration’s move to bypass the environmental laws triggered immediate opposition. Bob Krumenaker, the park’s most recent former superintendent, called the news “devastating” to Marfa Public Radio and referred to it as “giving CBP unfettered authority to do anything they want within the national park.” Legal challenges also followed in the form of multiple federal lawsuits, while members of Congress made efforts to block DHS’s funding for projects in Big Bend. 

Why the project has faced opposition, and from who

Grassroots organizations, conservation groups, businesses, local communities, and lawmakers have also made efforts to fight against the construction of the border wall in Big Bend.

Much of the opposition stems from concern over the park’s natural landscape, which is home to an array of wildlife and is effectively undeveloped. Other groups oppose the construction because they view the park as a cultural and heritage site, while still others have voiced concerns for the impact the planned barrier construction could have on the tourism economy there. 

A series of lawsuits have been filed in an effort to block DHS’s plans to construct the border wall in Big Bend.

One lawsuit from the Center for Biological Diversity challenged DHS’s waiving of laws to carry out construction in the park. “Until now no administration has been heartless enough to waive laws in a national park like Big Bend, so we’re suing to uphold the U.S. Constitution and protect this crown jewel,” Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement according to a news release. 

The Center for Biological Diversity had previously filed a lawsuit that argued the construction would “devastate the region’s wildlife, recreation economy, and natural and cultural heritage.”

Another lawsuit, filed by The People of La Junta for Preservation and Far

Flung Outdoor Center, a tribal nonprofit and an outdoor recreation company, argued that the construction will cause damage to archaeological sites associated with indigenous peoples and could threaten protected religious freedoms. 

Groups have also mounted protests and sent letters to lawmakers to call for the planned construction to be halted.

In March, the grassroots organization No Big Bend Wall sent a letter to several leaders on congressional committees on behalf of 132 organizations asking that the use of any federal funding for the border wall in Big Bend be prohibited. 

All the Democratic members of the Texas delegation in Congress sent a letter to Mullin later that same month voicing “staunch opposition” to the wall. 

“This proposal threatens preservation of one of America’s crown jewels, Texas’ largest state park, and the state’s only congressionally-designated Wild & Scenic River,” the lawmakers wrote. “Construction and maintenance of a border wall segment and the associated roads, secondary barriers, power lines, towers, and lighting will disrupt natural biodiversity, river dynamics subject to routine flash flooding, and one of the darkest night sky areas in the world.” 

Over the following two months, more than 2,000 people rallied at the Texas Capitol building in Austin, and seven former superintendents of Big Bend National Park urged Mullin not to waive federal laws to build the border wall in the park. 

In early August, video showed heavy machinery bulldozing the land at Big Bend. A bipartisan group of Texas House lawmakers soon after sent a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday in which they urged him to halt the Big Bend construction, citing “damage to one of Texas’ most pristine and irreplaceable landscapes” that they said had already begun with the movement of bulldozers and construction equipment into the park. 

Last Wednesday, a large crowd of protesters gathered in the park chanting “No road. No wall. No wire. No way," as they held hands in a circle. They also held a large banner that read “NO WALL,” along with a series of other wildlife-themed flags and signs. 

More than 140 local businesses, recreation groups, and outfitters who rely on the tourism economy in the park also penned a letter on Aug. 4 to Cornyn, Cruz, and Abott asking them to halt the border construction to preserve the vibrant tourism economy that lives within the park.

Scott released a statement last week in response to the public reaction specifying that “what people are seeing right now is survey and design work—NOT construction of a wall through the park.”

Following Scott’s later announcement that CBP would be pausing construction on the wall in Big Bend, the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), which has pushed back against the Big Bend construction, lamented the damage that it said the project has already done to the park’s lands. 

“The people have spoken, and they do not want the Trump administration to bulldoze America’s national parks for border infrastructure,” said NPCA President and CEO Tiernan Sittenfeld in a statement. “Unfortunately, the federal contractors’ bulldozers have already inflicted tremendous damage to one of America’s most iconic national parks. Their heavy equipment has torn through miles of priceless wild landscape, wreaking havoc on sensitive wildlife and irreplaceable habitat.”

Laurie was on her way to a gate at the airport where she worked as a manager when a colleague called with a warning: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had turned up again and were asking airline staff to help locate a passenger.

She had years of experience cooperating with federal law enforcement. But the encounters she was accustomed to followed a protocol: airline managers were notified in advance, officers arrived in uniform with their badges visible and judicial warrants were presented for passenger arrests.

Read more: ICE Considers Expanding Detention Space in 14 Locations—Including Guantanamo Bay and Virgin Islands

Multiple gate agents working at airports in Colorado, Texas and Arizona have told TIME that ICE agents have become a recurring presence in recent weeks. With protocols for handling such encounters unclear or inconsistently applied, airline employees like Laurie say they are increasingly being left to decide for themselves how to respond.

She knew how consequential that decision could be.

Ten days earlier, two men in plain clothes had approached a gate agent, identified themselves only as federal officers and asked the employee to summon a passenger. Laurie, who was the manager on duty, had received no advance notice of their arrival. She approached the men and asked for identification.

She said the officers told her they were ICE agents and showed their badges, which had not been visible. An announcement went out over the airport’s public address system. A woman approached the desk, and the officers took her into custody.

Laurie asked to see a warrant and the men told her it was in their car. She followed as they escorted the passenger to an unmarked vehicle with an out-of-state license plate, where the officers showed her an administrative warrant rather than a judicial warrant signed by a judge.

“Well, this isn't a criminal. This is immigration, it's different,” the agents told her, before handcuffing the passenger and driving away.

Laurie asked TIME to use a pseudonym because she fears government retaliation and was not authorized by her employer to speak publicly. TIME reviewed video footage of the incident filmed by Laurie.

“Because I hadn't seen this before, I was kind of freaking out, thinking, ‘What do I do?’” she said.

ICE ramps up its presence at airports

Airline employees around the country are confronting similar questions as ICE expands its presence at U.S. airports. Gate agents say officers have asked them to help identify or locate passengers, provide information from internal airline systems and grant access to restricted areas such as jet bridges and, in some cases, aircraft. The requests have left some workers uncertain about when they are required to assist federal officers and when doing so could conflict with airline security protocols.

The increase in airport enforcement comes as ICE seeks to meet a White House goal of 2,000 arrests a day, a target confirmed by an ICE official not authorized to speak publicly. Last month, it was reported that the agency was making an average of 20 to 40 arrests a day at airports, targeting, among others, travelers with expired visas and pending asylum cases.

Videos of airport arrests have also circulated widely online. On July 21, two plainclothes ICE agents arrested Chantal Morales Rojas, a 27-year-old woman from Ecuador, at the jet bridge at Denver International Airport, according to a widely shared video. That same day, ICE arrested an Ethiopian faculty member from the University of Maryland at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

The operations have been aided by expanded sharing of travelers’ information between federal agencies. Since May 2025, ICE has been obtaining traveler information through the Transportation Security Administration under a previously undisclosed data-sharing program, according to a declassified memo released by the watchdog group American Oversight. The New York Times reported that the program gives ICE access to the names and birth dates of passengers the agency believes may be subject to immigration arrest.

The administration has also broadened its use of administrative warrants. Previous administrations used such warrants to arrest people who were already in deportation proceedings. Under the Trump administration, they have also been used in cases involving immigrants who are actively applying to renew their immigration status.

“In the past, people like that have never been prioritized for deportation if they pose no other public safety threat, given that they're taking steps to get into compliance with the law,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council.

Backlogs and processing delays in the immigration system can put immigrants at risk of losing legal protections while their applications are pending, she said. 

ICE agents can also make arrests without a warrant in certain circumstances if they have probable cause to believe someone is in the country without legal status and is likely to escape if not immediately arrested. Gupta said that authority has been abused in previous immigration operations.

In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that law enforcement officers are “simply enforcing our nation’s laws and following all applicable laws and established policies.”

“When DHS components operate in the same transportation environment, they coordinate as appropriate to support public safety, security, and lawful operations while minimizing disruption to the traveling public,” the statement continued. 

Some recent airport arrests have faced scrutiny in court. Jodi Ziesemer, an immigration lawyer who represents four immigrants arrested by ICE at Denver International Airport in separate cases, said two of her clients were told that the officers arresting them did not know why they were being detained. In one case, she said, ICE could not initially establish the reason for the arrest.

“I asked ICE why they had arrested her, and they told me they thought that maybe she had a deportation order from 2002, but they couldn't find any other paperwork about it because it wasn't a digital file, so they detained her first, and then they started looking for some paperwork about her,” Ziesemer said. The client spent six weeks in a detention center before a federal judge ordered her release.

How airline employees are responding

The encounters have also raised concerns about the position in which they place airlines and their employees. A Phoenix couple is suing United Airlines for false imprisonment and negligence over the carrier’s role in an ICE arrest at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

“I've gone to agents who have been involved with any ICE agent,” Laurie said. “Most of them are just like, ‘I don't want to be doing this. Like, why are we helping them?’”

After the first arrest she witnessed, Laurie raised her concerns with airline leadership and asked for guidance.

“We haven't gotten a clear security directive,” she explained. “There's never been an official written directive about ICE."

Laurie says she was still waiting for guidance when ICE agents returned to the airport looking for another passenger. This time, she made a different choice. She called the supervisor at the gate, asked for the passenger’s phone number and called the woman herself.

“I know this is going to sound extremely radical, or crazy,” she recounted telling the woman, “but ICE is there at the gate, and they're looking for you."

There was a pause. “Are you serious?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” Laurie said. “I know this is crazy, but I promise you. I'm being serious.”

“Should I leave?” the woman asked. “I think it might be best if you do,” Laurie said.

When Laurie reached the gate, the woman she had called approached her. She appeared to be in her late 20s and was traveling with a family member. Laurie said the two stepped into a bathroom to speak privately, where the passenger said she did not understand why ICE was looking for her.

“Why is this happening? I have all my papers,” she asked.

After calling a relative, the woman decided not to take the flight. She returned with the hood of her jacket pulled over her head, thanked Laurie and left the gate with her family member.

The ICE agents arrived after she was gone. Laurie recognized two of them from an earlier encounter. About 10 minutes later, one approached her, showed his badge and asked whether she could confirm that the passenger had checked in. Laurie refused, telling him airline employees could not provide passenger information.

As the flight neared final boarding, another ICE officer accused Laurie of interfering with the operation and pressed her to help locate the passenger. Laurie declined to say whether the woman was on the flight's passenger list and told the officer he would need to contact the airline’s corporate security department for information. “You're going to need a subpoena,” she said. No arrests were made at the gate that day.

The next day, the passenger called her. 

She had made it home. And she was with her child.

"I was extremely scared that ICE would take another person in front of me, but also for myself and how I was jeopardizing my job and safety," Laurie said. "But I would 100% do it again, without a moment of hesitation."

President Donald Trump announced late Tuesday a temporary pause on 50% tariffs on Canada as both countries race to finalize a trade deal.

The President’s announcement came hours before a series of tariffs set to cover about $20 billion worth of imports into the U.S. from Canada were set to take effect.

“I have paused the 50% tariffs against Canada, that were scheduled to kick in tomorrow morning for a three day period, based on the fact that Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a deal!” Trump said on social media.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney released a statement moments later, confirming that there had been “intensive discussions” with the U.S. to “address outstanding trade issues.”

“Substantial progress has been made, although there is important work still to be done,” he said.

Read More: Trump Imposes 50% Tariff Hike on Canadian Goods

The tariffs will now be paused until Aug. 21, subject to the finalization of an agreement between the two countries.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the deal will include "comprehensive market access for ​all ⁠American goods, economic security commitments, digital trade alignment," along with other provisions.

Trump added in his social media post that the Keystone XL pipeline—a cross-border oil pipeline project between the U.S. and Canada that was canceled by former President Joe Biden in 2021 after pushback from environmentalists, Native American tribes, and Indigenous advocates—"may be awoken from the grave," but did not provide further details.

The President later posted what appeared to be an AI-generated image of himself dragging the Keystone pipeline out of the ground.

Neither side has provided further confirmation about the contents of the agreement.

TIME has reached out to both the White House and the Prime Minister's office for comment.

U.S. and Canada push toward a deal

Carney said earlier this week that he planned to speak with the U.S. President ahead of the tariff deadline. The announcement follows a period of negotiations between the two sides.

During a tour of a tire factory in Iowa last week, Greer told reporters that the U.S. and Canada were engaged in “constructive negotiations” but warned that if a “country retaliates” they would “take action.”

Canada's minister responsible for U.S. trade, Dominic LeBlanc, and chief trade negotiator Janice Charette have been in Washington since last week for talks.

The negotiations unfolded against a backdrop of ongoing grievances between the two countries, including Trump’s repeated statements about his desire to annex Canada and make it the 51st U.S. state—an idea Carney has strongly pushed back against.

In August, Carney took a swipe at Trump, mocking the U.S. President after a teleprompter malfunctioned in the middle of an on-camera speech.

The tense relationship between the pair has also played out over the Gordie Howe International Bridge—a cross-border bridge connecting the two countries that has repeatedly become a source of disagreement between Washington and Ottawa.

How U.S.-Canada trade tensions escalated

The last-minute tariff pause comes after more than a year of escalations between the two countries.

In February 2025, the White House hit Canada with a 25% tariff on most goods and 10% on energy resources, citing what it regarded as inadequate progress in curbing cross-border illegal immigration and drug trafficking.

Canada then imposed tariffs on some vehicle imports from the U.S. in April 2025, amid a larger trade war sparked by Trump’s global tariffs—the majority of which were struck down by a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year.

The 50% tariff hike on a range of Canadian goods was announced in July, with Trump signing a series of proclamations citing Canada’s “discriminatory treatment” of American products.

The new levy, a retaliation for Canada’s tariffs, would apply to a range of Canadian goods, including electronics, sports equipment, and essential oils.

The Administration had also announced targeted new tariffs on Canadian dairy products and exports of wine and other alcoholic beverages.

According to economists, the tariffs could have had significant economic consequences if enacted. TD Economics estimated that, if maintained, they could reduce Canadian GDP growth by 0.3 to 0.6 percentage points over the following year.

A Canadian Federation of Independent Business survey of 1,833 firms found that 77% of affected exporters expected revenue losses, while 35% expected their revenue to fall by at least half.

In a new proclamation issued Tuesday suspending the tariffs, Trump said: “Canada has expressed a commitment to remove the discriminations or unreasonable and unequal impositions.”

In a statement late Tuesday, the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S. applauded Trump's announcement and called for "a negotiated solution that gets American spirits back on retail shelves in all Canadian provinces and returns the spirits sector to a zero-for-zero tariff framework."

The new tariffs were set to apply despite the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA)—which had shielded Canadian industries from earlier U.S. tariffs.

The USMCA, which was signed by Trump in 2018, is a trilateral agreement that eliminated or reduced tariffs on goods traded between the nations of North America. It governs nearly $2 trillion in annual trade among the three countries.

In early July, the U.S. declined to renew the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement for a 16-year term. Rather than terminate it outright, this puts the USMCA under annual review. Trade experts told TIME that the move is expected to carry profound long-term economic consequences.